In the primary contest for the Knoxville City Council District 1 seat, Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commissioner Karyn Adams cruised to a first-place finish with 57 percent of the vote in a four-person race. 

Adams finished first in the primary with 57 percent of the vote in a four-person race; Jones came in second with 20.5 percent of the total.

Adams will face insurance agent Becky Jones, who squeaked into second place by just 22 votes over state agency compliance officer Lindsey Jaremko. Taxi-business owner Charles Van Morgan finished a distant fourth.

This election marks the first time that City Council district races will be decided by district voters only and not by a citywide vote, so Adams enters the general election with decided momentum. 

The primary turnout was abysmally low — just 1,613 out of 12,009 registered voters (13.4 percent) in District 1 cast ballots. Turnout is always higher in the general election, however, and the local-option sales-tax referendum on this year’s ballot could alter the dynamic in unforeseen ways.

District 1 encompasses all of South Knoxville — including the South Waterfront, Island Home Park, Vestal, South Haven and Colonial Village — and the Fort Sanders neighborhood adjacent to the University of Tennessee campus.

The seat is currently held by Tommy Smith, who is unable to run for reelection because of term limits.

Politically, the district tilts toward the progressive end of the spectrum. In the 2024 presidential election, more than 55 percent of South Knoxville voters cast their ballots for Democrat Kamala Harris. City elections are nonpartisan in the sense that candidates’ party affiliations aren’t noted on the ballot. 

As of Aug. 18, at the end of the most recent campaign-finance reporting period, Adams had $10,972 on hand. After spending almost all her cash leading up to primary Election Day, Jones had a mere $168 at the same point.

Early voting begins Oct. 15, with Election Day falling on Nov. 4.

These profiles are lightly edited updates from Compass’ primary coverage.

Karyn Adams

Adams has served on the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission for the past five years. Every month, she makes decisions on land use and zoning that help shape development in the city and county.

“I’ve had some people tell me that Planning Commission is the hardest job you can have in the public sphere,” she said between sips of non-alcoholic hop water at Printshop Beer Co. on the South Waterfront. “I personally think school board is the hardest, but Planning forces you to reckon with land-use decisions and zoning decisions that affect (people’s) biggest investment — their home — and their physical community.”

Adams said she would focus on being intentional about growth and preserving greenspace if elected to City Council.

She said South Knoxville is unique in the city because it wasn’t chopped up by interstate construction. “That’s why we have the greenspace we have, that enabled the Urban Wilderness and the parks that we have. People want to make sure they persist.”

Her time on the Planning Commission, as well as in the private sector and in education, has prepared her for service on City Council, she believes. 

“I’m the most experienced person that’s running in this race,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”

Adams grew up in Kingsport. She attended Agnes Scott College in Atlanta before transferring to the University of Tennessee, where she earned an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.

While at UT, she worked at the Tomato Head, where she met her future husband and worked her way up to manager. After graduation, she considered moving to New York City, but a friend persuaded her to go to Atlanta, where she worked for Omniview, later known as IPIX and best recognized for its camera technology that could capture 360-degree images.

Adams then took a job at Maryville College, where she helped develop the campus master plan and worked on a major capital campaign that financed the school’s Clayton Center for the Arts.

In 2010, she founded H-A ThirtyOne, a marketing firm for higher-education institutions, where she is principal and creative director. 

Adams and her husband, Bruce Cole, have lived in Lindbergh Forest for 22 years and raised their two sons in the neighborhood. Active in community organizations, she’s a member of the South Knoxville Neighborhood & Business Coalition and has served as president of Ijams Nature Center. 

Adams said Chapman Highway, the often-dangerous main thoroughfare through South Knoxville, needs attention. She said she considers the stretch north of Fort Dickerson Park to be an extension of Henley Street, and she noted that improvements already planned for that section of the highway should slow traffic, create safer streets and elevate the sense of community.

Two bridges — one historic but closed and the other in the planning stages — will be important links for South Knoxville.

The historic Gay Street Bridge is under repair and will be returned to service in a few months, but only for pedestrian and bicycle traffic until it can be replaced. Adams said she trusts the engineers who have recommended that the span remain closed to vehicular traffic for now but acknowledged that residents are impatient for the bridge to reopen.

“People feel strongly about the bridge. I do, too,” she said. “No one doesn’t want it open.”

The planned pedestrian bridge between the Scottish Pike area of the South Waterfront and the UT campus would establish a connection between the two parts of the 1st District, but it would serve the city as a whole as well.

“That pedestrian bridge all of a sudden connects a network of greenway systems that allows someone to get from far South Knoxville to far West Knoxville.”

As would be expected of a member of the planning commission, housing is one of Adams’ primary interests. She said Knoxville needs more options than single-family houses and large apartment complexes. Mixed-use development along Chapman Highway, with residences and locally owned “shops of utility,” would represent meaningful progress, she said.

Adams said the city should pursue multiple strategies to address homelessness but praised Flenniken Landing in South Knoxville as a model for successful permanent supportive housing. That’s not the only solution, however.

“You start to solve homelessness by giving people homes, but it’s also the most expensive way,” she said.

Adams was surprised by the number of people she has encountered who are not opposed to the proposed sales-tax increase. Accountability, however, has to be a key component.

“If this passes, I will hold the mayor and my colleagues accountable,” she said. “People just need to know. If they know, they can make informed decisions.”

Adams said she loves the city and South Knoxville and wants to make sure that people can live in Knoxville and pursue their dreams.

“I feel very passionate about this,” she said. “I understand how important it is to make sure that we keep moving forward, but I understand that it’s important that we move forward together. I don’t want to leave anybody behind.”

Becky Jones

A strong advocate for police officers and first responders, Jones said she got into the race after a conversation with a retired Knoxville police officer, who suggested that she run.

She prayed about it and “felt the Lord say, ‘Go for it,’ and here we are.”

Jones comes from a law-enforcement family. An uncle is a retired Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent, and she has cousins who work for the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She said her husband, who is African-American, runs counter to the “false narrative” about law-enforcement officers and race.

“Police officers respect him because he respects them,” she said.

Jones said Police Chief Paul Noel was one of the first people she spoke with after deciding to run. 

“We talked about the issues that a lot of the voters were mentioning, and the issue that kept coming up regarded the homeless,” she said in a phone interview. “The majority of the homeless people that are downtown are either … on drugs or they have mental-health issues.” 

She wants to see KPD work closely with mental-health facilities, but she doesn’t think officers have the training to go on calls with mental-health professionals, as they do under the department’s co-responder program.

“I think that’s the most ridiculous thing that has ever been thought of,” she said. 

Jones said voters are telling her to make South Knoxville relevant, with nice restaurants and locally owned shops instead of businesses such as vape shops.

“If I see another vape store open up, I’m going to vomit,” she said. “We have vape stores up and down Chapman Highway. South Knoxville voters want options.” 

Jones is a lifelong South Knoxvillian who lives in Vestal with her husband, Samuel Jones. She has an accounting degree from South College.

“I’ve never lived outside (South Knoxville) or past the Henley Street Bridge,” she said. “So when I tell you I’m homegrown, I’m homegrown.” 

Jones does go out of the district for work, however. She’s an insurance agent in Fountain City. She got into the field 20 years ago when she called to get a quote on a policy and wound up being recruited to become an agent.

Jones said the city needs to find the money to rebuild the Gay Street Bridge sooner rather than later because the added traffic on the Henley Bridge could eventually compromise that span.

“Knoxville has to have a bridge to be able to get across. It’s just the fact of getting in and looking at funding and what has to happen. But we definitely have to have a bridge.”

Jones’ support for bridges doesn’t extend to the planned pedestrian bridge across the Tennessee River between UT and the Scottish Pike neighborhood on the South Waterfront.

“That’s not what South Knoxville needs, and it’s not what Knoxville needs,” she said.

Jones is also strongly opposed to an increase in the local-option sales tax, a referendum on which will be on the ballot in November.

“That’s a hard no for me,” she said. “I do not support any type of tax increase. We’ve got a lot of people that are just struggling to get by now, and to turn around and try to tax people that are already struggling, that’s not something that I’m for.” 

According to Jones, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon wants to spend too much money on the wrong things — the new sculpture in the Cradle of Country Music Park and defending lawsuits from firefighters instead of paying them more, for example.

“You look at all these different things, and yet we are continuing to spend, spend, spend, instead of looking at what we have right now,” she said. “Our budget definitely needs a look, and the frivolous spending needs to stop.”

Even if the sales-tax referendum passes, Jones isn’t on board with the five-year spending plan that would go with it. For example, she said, the $10 million annually for affordable housing would be useless.

“There is no such thing as affordable housing,” she said, “especially when you have a lot of these builders that are coming in from different areas, and they’re building four-plexes and then selling them to people that don’t even live in Knoxville.”

Money for sidewalks and paving would be welcome, she continued, but bike lanes are a waste of space and money.

“Moody Avenue — I rarely see people riding bicycles down through there,” Jones said. “Those types of things are not where we need to be spending our time, money and energy for South Knoxville; there’s a lot bigger types of things that are needed right now, so that’s not a priority to me.”

She said she would prioritize listening to voters to understand their exact needs and wants, taking them seriously, and carrying their sentiments to City Council. She said one voter told her that candidates had always told him what they wanted and never asked what he wanted.

“This is not how I want to approach it,” Jones said. “I want to be able to talk to voters and be their voice. Yes, I have ideas, and yes, there are things that I want to see different, but I want to be their voice, and be their loud voice.”